Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's SUV was be­ing analysed for fin­ger­prints last night, af­ter it fea­tured in a dra­mat­ic mid-af­ter­noon gun crime. One week af­ter a $5 mil­lion "hit" was al­leged­ly tak­en out on the life of the prime min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­date, her 31-year-old niece Lisa Har­ry and dri­ver Den­zil Dook­er­an were yes­ter­day robbed at gun­point. The gun­men drove off with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's lux­u­ry Toy­ota Pra­do. Po­lice dis­cov­ered the ve­hi­cle hours lat­er in some bush­es off the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way.

At a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er James Philbert said the po­lice had no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the rob­bery was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. The dra­ma un­fold­ed at around 2.30 pm out­side Tu­na­puna Hin­du School, short­ly af­ter the duo left a func­tion at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence at Ma­coya. The gun­men emerged from a sil­ver Almera car and an­nounced a hold-up. Two men drove off with Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ve­hi­cle, while the third sped off in the Almera. Dook­er­an and Har­ry were left strand­ed along the high­way. They were un­harmed. Even­tu­al­ly, they se­cured a phone call and told a po­lit­i­cal col­league of the ve­hi­cle's hi­jack­ing.

The po­lice said, how­ev­er, that Har­ry was trau­ma­tised. Hours lat­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar at first de­clined to draw a po­lit­i­cal link to the crime. "I do not have the facts... I am not jump­ing to any con­clu­sions," she told the T&T Guardian. In a sub­se­quent state­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar took a tougher tone, say­ing the crime was linked to "the sad state of af­fairs," in which "no one... can take their per­son­al safe­ty and that of their fam­i­ly for grant­ed." She ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning of "a flip­pant man­ner" to­ward crime by de­scrib­ing it as "col­lat­er­al dam­age." She slammed Man­ning, say­ing he "dis­plays such scant re­gard for what has be­come a na­tion­al cri­sis." The state­ment con­firmed that "new se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures" to pro­tect Per­sad-Bisses­sar would be tak­en in light of yes­ter­day's crime. Man­ning had dis­missed last week's re­ports of death threats against Per­sad-Bisses­sar as a "hoax."